Holding books in an upright position on bookshelves has been a universal problem over many years. Even conventional hard cover books usually require some degree of support on bookshelves, such as an occasional bookend or partition. However the trend toward a large predominance of soft-cover reading materials such as paper-backs, magazines, brochures, catalogs and the like has created a large unfulfilled need for providing bookshelves with better upright support for a variety of intermixed hard- and soft-cover reading materials, to prevent the well known annoyance and unsightliness of sagging, slumping and crushing of the softer and thinner items.
Approaches addressing this problem in the past have usually proposed equipping the bookshelf with some form of partitions. Some examples of early art employed structure suitable only for incorporation as part of original custom built-in shelving structure, as developed for public buildings such as libraries. Approaches proposed for original manufacture or custom construction have typically provided only fixed partition spacings, wasted an excessive amount of available shelf space due to partition thickness and/or lacked the flexibility and adaptability that would be necessary to render them satisfactory in the problem of retrofitting existing bookshelves as addressed by the present invention.
Wires or rods have sometimes been proposed for partitions, as disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 660,264 to Storm and 1,506,204 to Snoddy, however these are suited primarily to the support of hard-cover books, and are inadequate to support soft-cover items satisfactorily.
Sheet metal or plastic bookcases and "organizers" have become available with thinwall partitions, and some of these may be suitable for soft-cover reading materials, however configurations of this type are known to be available only in pre-assembled form having fixed partition spacings and total width which render them generally inflexible and unadaptable to the individual requirements of upgrading existing bookshelves.
Pre-assembled bookrack structures, when not in actual use, are needlessly bulky, wasteful of storage space and costly to warehouse, pack and ship; therefore it is deemed highly advantageous for the bookrack to be made available as a knocked-down kit of flat parts for on-site assembly.
Many known bookrack configurations, including some in knocked-down kit form, have required considerable skill and use of tools to assemble and install, and even if adaptable to to existing bookshelves, many of these require drilled holes, screw holes or other irreversible and unacceptable disfiguration of the bookshelves.
A concealed interlocking system for fastening partitions to bases and backs is needed, eliminating any moldings, cleats, brackets or other fastenings which would intrude into the book support cells. Fastening means should be integral with the partitions, bases and backs, to avoid the need for additional hardware parts.
Concealed fastenings have been disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,030,279 to Browne and 4,178,047 to Welch, and in U.K. Pat. No. 2,092,884 to Osmond, however all three of these approaches require additional specially-tooled metal hardware insert parts, and are applicable only to wooden furniture-type construction with wall thickness in the order of 3/4", which would waste an excessive amount of the available shelf space.
An interlocking bookrack of the type addressed by this invention and satisfying most of its general requirements is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,595,105 to Gold, the present inventor, utilizing 3-layer sheet metal laminated partitions separated and retained by individual formed sheet metal bottom and rear spacers. To provide a selection of partition spacings, the it was necessary to provide the spacers in various widths. As a further development of this approach, the present invention has achieved a significant reduction in the number of different part configurations required, and has simplified fabrication by structuring the parts for molding in plastic.
It is a primary object of the present invention to provide an improved, economically-manufactured bookrack for retrofitting into an existing bookshelf to provide superior support for a variety of reading materials ranging from thin unbound papers to books of various thickness.
It is a further object of this invention to enable the capability of providing the above-described bookrack in the form of a knocked-down kit of flat parts which are convenient and economical to store, pack and ship.
It is a further object to provide interlocking flat parts from which the bookrack may be easily assembled by an unskilled person without requiring tools, fastenings or other additional hardware.
It is a further object to provide standardized parts from which the bookrack may be assembled to virtually any desired length, as required by existing bookcase structure.
It is a further object to provide standardized parts which provide total freedom to select and intermix partition spacings in the assembly of the bookrack.
It is a further object of the present invention to configure standard bookrack parts which may be readily molded from plastic.
It is a further object to accomplish all of the foregoing objects with the minimum possible number of different part configurations as supplied to the user.
It is a further object of this invention to make the bookrack highly space-efficient by making all parts to have thin walls.
It is still a further object to avoid any protrusions or obstructions which could interfere with accomodated reading material, by concealing all partition-fastening means.
These objects have been met in the present invention by the development of a novel system of bookrack parts, requiring only two configurations, from which a wide variety of bookracks may be readily assembled: (1) a standard partition configuration and (2) a versatile panel configuration utilized in both the base and the back, readily capable of both reduction in length and extension to unlimited length requirements. These configurations incorporate novel integral concealed interlocking partition-fastening means and enable a full selection of intermixable partition spacings.